Good News: Montana Railroad Bridge Back Up and Running

We had some crazy news over the weekend with the deck collapse at the Briarwood Country Club in Billings. You may also have seen my story about all of the logs piling up at Yellowtail Dam.

It was great to share some good news Monday morning on the radio as well.

As Andy Garland with Montana Rail Link tells us, the railroad bridge that collapsed over the Yellowstone River last month has now been repaired and the first train rolled over the tracks on Saturday.

Andy Garland: Montana Rail Link has resumed operations with the completion of bridge construction efforts at the site of the June 24^th derailment near Reed Point. Significant progress was made over the last week of construction, allowing the first train to cross over the newly constructed bridge at approximately 11:30am on Saturday, July 22^nd.

Thanks to David Stamey with Stillwater County DES for sharing the above photo.

Garland tells us that construction work "was completed ahead of initial estimates, allowing service to officially be restored 28 days post outage." The cost of the bridge repair was paid for by MRL.

Andy Garland: The safety of these crews, our employees, and members of the public remains our top priority as train service is restored. We would like to thank all of the responders, contractors, and our employees involved with getting this work done in such an expeditious manner, as well as the local communities involved over the course of the last month.

Garland says MRL remains committed to addressing any impacts to the area as a result of this incident.

H/T to Hailey Monaco with KTVQ-TV for first reporting the news.